The State of Food and, Agriculture 1959
World agricultural production, excluding Mainland China, was more than 4 percent higher in 1958/59 than in each of the two preceding seasons. But, though the check to agricultural expansion in 1957/58 is now fully overcome, recovery has taken place chiefly in the developed countries, often swelling stockpiles of unsaleable commodities. Also, a slowing down int he growth of per caput production continues.
In most of the less developed countries, the average annual growth of agricultural production remains nearly one percent greater than the growth of population; but in several countries of South East Asia and in parts of Latin America and Africa, agricultural production barely keeps pace with, or falls behind, the growth of population.
This volume contains two special chapters. One examines the living conditions among cultivators at different levels of economic development. The second chapter concerns various ways of bringing technical knowledge to the service of the farmer.
The need for a full integration between agriculture and economic development forms the central theme of this survey for 1959.
197 pages, U.S. $2.00 or 10s.
Hybrid Maize Breeding and Seed Production
(Agricultural Development Paper No. 62)
Today maize is one of the world's most important food products for human beings and for livestock. Maize also yields more industrial products than any other grain. In the United States alone, hybrid acreage increased from 143,000 acres in 1933 to nearly 72 million acres in 1956. Meanwhile, hybrid maize is rapidly replacing open-pollinated maize in the European and Mediterranean countries. More than 23 percent of Italy's large maize acreage is now hybrid.
The author of this Paper, Dr. Robert W. Jugenheimer, Professor of Plant Genetics in the College of Agriculture of the University of Illinois, is in charge of maize breeding in its Department of Agronomy.
432 pages, U.S. $4.00 or 20s.
Agricultural Credit in Economically Under developed Countries
(Agricultural Study No. 46)
In this Study, the principles of agricultural credit are expounded by Dr. Horace Belshaw, a former Director of FAO's Rural Welfare Division and now Macarthy Professor of Economics at the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.
He shows that, -in an underdeveloped country the Government bears a direct responsibility encouraging, or creating, the right types of credit societies. He also shows that the methods of an agricultural credit society must often differ from those of a commercial bank.
In most underdeveloped countries, agricultural credit is static. Static credit - and this represents the heart of Dr. Belshaw's thesis - should be converted into dynamic credit. Then, at the end of the credit period, there is an improvement in output and in income or in assets.
255 pages, U.S. $3.00 or 15s.
Plant Exploration, Collection and Introduction
(Agricultural Study No. 41)
Requirements of an ever-increasing world population, both human and animal, have created a pressing need for introductions of new plant material that offer possibilities of crop and grassland improvement. As a result, certain countries are already occupied with the problem and many more have expressed an interest in dealing with it on a national or international basis.
This study, in reviewing briefly the botanical history of some representative economic plants, presents current views on a co-ordinated scientific approach to the exploration, collection and introduction of new plant material and suggests how international organizations might provide that coordination and technical guidance.
The study also indicates a need to consider how plant collections should be made and how extensive they should be in order to obtain a representative sample of the species or population being collected. Better scientific planning and conduct of exploration is advocated in place of the system of random collections of hundreds of thousands of samples.
117 pages.- U.S. $1.00 or 5s.
Methods of Farm Management Investigations for Improving Farm Productivity
(Agricultural Development Paper No. 64)
The farm, as an economic and social institution, is centuries old. The science of farm management, on the other hand, is relatively new.
The surveyor or official, if he is to make any real headway, must first win the farmer's trust. Not the least important part of Dr. W. Y. Yang's new Agricultural Development Paper explains some of the methods of personal approach which the authorized collector of information should use. There is, for instance, the technique of putting the right questions to the farmer at the right time and in the right way.
No farm is so small that it cannot profit from better methods of management, and Dr. Yang shows convincingly that proper farm management - however restricted its scale may be - must lead to greater productivity.
228 pages, U.S. $2.00 or 10s.
